Growing Up Native American

by Bill Adler

  The parking lot has a SORRY FULL sign across the entrance. I take a long-shot chance. “Why don’t we go up to Canada?” I suggest. “Saskatchewan is less than fifty miles. We can see your old friends.”

  Sky has an argument with himself about this idea and his face changes back and forth depending which side he’s on, but Evelyn pays no attention. She swings the car around a dusty corner and noses into an empty space. The sounds of the crowd surround us as soon as the engine quits, the choppy rumble of conversation, the calls and clapping.

  After we pay admission, Sky and Evelyn stick to me like pennies on a Bingo card. They stand close together, shifting their weight, looking in every direction, and making a point to talk loud to me. They act as though I’m their safe conduct, the reason they’re allowed in. For just a flash I see them through Aunt Ida’s eyes: a skinny middle-aged hippie and a heavyset woman in Bermuda shorts and a yellow nylon shirt with STAFF written in brown thread across her breast, her gray hair short as a man’s, and her mouth blazing with bright lipstick for the occasion. Their skin is colorless and loose over their bones. They’re nervous, not used to being strangers surrounded by Indians.

  But they can relax. They aren’t the ones who are about to be challenged.

  I’m not five feet inside the gate when I come face to face with the last person I want to see. Foxy Cree is standing in the shade under the bleachers, and is in the process of violating the Absolutely No Alcoholic Beverages rule that is posted at every entrance. His half-closed eyes scan the crowd, pass me once, then zero in. He smiles to himself and moves in my direction.

  “Find some good seats,” I tell Sky and Evelyn. “You don’t want to have to sit in the sun.”

  At my suggestion, Sky wanders off toward the stands, but not Evelyn. She waves him on when he looks back. “I’ll be there, darling,” she says, but she’s looking at Foxy and knows trouble when she sees it.

  “Do you know that one coming?” she asks, punching me in the side.

  I have to admit that if you’re not acquainted with Foxy he’s handsome. He has a thin straight nose, deep-set black eyes, and long hair, divided today into two leather-wrapped braids. Beneath his weathered blue jeans jacket he wears an unbuttoned cowboy shirt. On his head is a black Navajo hat with a bead-work band. He’s taller than me by a good three inches and so slim he can slip out of the window of a car without opening the door. But once you know him none of that counts.

  “Rayona,” he says, all sly. His voice has a lilt to it that usually shows on people about the same time their vision goes blurry and their drinks spill. It’s the voice of a person who thinks he’s a lot wilier than the one he’s talking to. “I saw this dark patch against the wall and I thought, Foxy, either that’s the biggest piece of horse shit you’ve ever seen or it’s your fucking cousin Rayona.”

  Evelyn is on red alert. This scene has no part in her vision of family reunions.

  “We thought you was dead,” Foxy goes on. “Or gone back to Africa.” He says that last word real slow.

  “Fuck you,” I say.

  “Rayona, Rayona, Rayona,” Foxy sings. It isn’t three o’clock and he’s loaded already. His dirty cowboy boots stay in one spot but his body revolves as if moved by a breeze. He sways toward Evelyn.

  “You here for the show, white lady?” he asks her. “You like dark meat?” He looks her over and stops at her chest. He laughs real low.

  “Is this the piece of trash you were telling me about?” Evelyn has forgotten about being a stranger. I see her muscles bunching beneath the thin yellow material.

  “No,” I tell her. “Don’t. Go with Sky.”

  She doesn’t want to leave. She’s ready to wipe the floor with Foxy but my look stands in her way. “This is my cousin,” I say. “He might know what we came to find out. Let me talk to him.”

  All this time she’s staring Foxy down, telling him with her eyes everything she thinks, and I can see she has penetrated his muscatel. His mouth hangs open as though it has been slapped and his face is full of complaint. He’s wounded by the injustice of Evelyn’s power, but that will turn to spite once he has me alone.

  Without blinking, Evelyn asks if I’m sure, and when I say yes she suddenly takes a step toward Foxy, which makes him jump back.

  “Norman and me’ll be waiting for you. Don’t take any crap.” With a last, narrow-eyed warning look at Foxy she turns her back and disappears into the crowd.

  I don’t wait for him to recover. “Who’s here?” I ask.

  Foxy’s still watching the place where Evelyn was standing and it takes a second for him to swing in my direction. “Holy shit,” he says. “Where’d you find her?”

  “What are you doing here?” I ask it a different way. This time it gets through.

  “I’m here to ride, Rayona,” he says. My name is ugly in his mouth, just as he means it to be. “I got me entered in the bareback bronc on a hand-picked mount.” He reaches into his pocket and draws out a piece of paper with 37 written on it in black Magic Marker.

  “You’ll never make it,” I say and laugh at him before I consider what I’m doing.

  His face clouds over. “You think?”

  I don’t know what to say. He’s about to get madder no matter what.

  He looks blank and rubs his registration paper between his fingers. I think he might pass out on the spot, but instead he’s gathering an idea.

  “Are you here with anybody?” I ask him. “You can’t compete.”

  “If I forfeit I’m disqualified for all the fucking rodeos this summer.”

  “Come on, Foxy. They’ll bump you anyway. You’d break your neck. You’re drinking.”

  The bubble of Foxy’s plan has popped in his brain and he’s ready to deal. He reaches into his pocket for a piece of paper.

  “But you’re not. Oh no, not Rayona. How’s your priest boyfriend?” He balances himself with a hand that weights my shoulder. His fingers dig into me.

  I go cold. “Shut up.” I push him away and he falls heavily onto the ground. He shakes his head as if to clear it, then climbs to his feet.

  “You turd,” he says. “You’re going to ride for me.”

  “Don’t be dumb. I’ve never even been to a rodeo before.”

  “Well, you’re here now. All you have to do to keep my qualification is be sober enough to make it through the chute.”

  “No way.”

  “Do it for your mom. My horse belongs to the guy she’s shacked up with.”

  Dayton, I think.

  I want to hit Foxy, to kick the drunken leer off his face. I close my hands into fists and then I see a knife open in his palm. He holds it loose, ready. His legs seem steadier. His eyes are flat and red and I know he’d cut me without thinking twice.

  I take the easiest way out: I surrender. I don’t know whether it’s that I’m scared or that I’m defeated by the mention of Mom. I don’t really believe they’ll let me ride in Foxy’s place anyway. When they see I’m a girl they’ll disqualify me. And, too, the idea is impossible. The only experience I’ve had with horses was one summer in Seattle when Mom had a boyfriend who took us to a park where they rented saddle rides and I took a few lessons. I liked it all right, but those ponies were tame, trotted along in a line on paths through the trees. I can’t imagine myself on a wild bronc, so I agree.

  “What time?”

  “Now you’re talking, cousin,” Foxy laughs. He clicks the knife closed in one hand, and focuses his eyes on the form he still holds in the other.

  “Three forty-five,” he says. “Number thirty-seven. Horse named Babe.”

  He hands me the registration and then feels into the side of his boot for the long paper bag around the wine held tight against his thin leg. He tips it to his mouth, drinks, then wipes his dripping chin. “I’ll be watching, just in case you forget.”

  He starts to walk bowlegged to the stands, when the drink in his brain splashes the other way and he turns back.

  “If they think you’re a
girl,” he says, figuring it out as he goes along, “they won’t let you ride.” He wrestles with this thought, then slips off his jean jacket and hands it to me. “Put this on and button the front.”

  It’s large for me, but Foxy is pleased with the effect. He walks behind me and tugs on the thick black braid of my hair.

  “Now this,” he says, and sets the black Navajo on my head. I can’t believe Foxy and I have the same size brains, but we must because the hat fits.

  “They’ll just think I sat out in the sun too long.” Foxy breaks down at his own joke. He laughs so hard he loses his breath in wheezes and coughs and finally spits on the ground. “You’re a real Indian cowboy,” he says.

  It’s less than a half hour until the event. I don’t look for Sky and Evelyn since I have to figure this out for myself. The news that Mom is still on the reservation is sinking in. There’s a part of me that’s relieved. Ever since this morning, when Evelyn said Mom was sick, I’ve been worried in some nameless place, and now that relaxes. I wonder if in the weeks I’ve been gone, Mom has tried to find me, if she and Aunt Ida have made peace and worried together that I disappeared. No. She’s still at this Dayton’s and I still don’t know how to find him. My one path to his door is through his horse. He’s got to be around when she’s ridden. Maybe Mom’s here with him. Wouldn’t she be surprised to see me contest? How would she feel if I got thrown on my head?

  How will I feel? Fear rises in my neck at the thought of actually going through with Foxy’s plan. I’ve seen bronc riding on “Wide World of Sports,” and all I can remember is the sound of big men falling hard on the ground, the sight of crazed horses tossing their heads and kicking their hooves.

  I’ve been walking toward the stock pens while I think, looking into the crowd for Mom’s face, but instead I see Annabelle, and she’s spied me first. She’s dressed for the rodeo in tight jeans, a purple Bruce Springsteen T-shirt, long silver earrings, a bunch of turquoise bracelets on each arm, and blue Western boots. Her straight black hair hangs below her shoulders and her skin is tan and smooth. She has circled her eyes with dark liner and her fingernails are long and perfectly red. There’s something about her that reminds me of Ellen, but then I realize that it’s Ellen who’s reminded me of Annabelle. Ellen is dim in comparison.

  Annabelle comes up to me and demands, “Why are you wearing Foxy’s hat.” If she’s surprised to see me, she doesn’t let on.

  “He gave it to me.”

  “Is he drinking?”

  “He’s drunk.”

  “Shit,” she says. “He’s up in a few minutes. He’ll get bumped.”

  “He wants me to ride for him.” I’m unbelieving all over again at the idea.

  Annabelle cannot trust her ears. She doesn’t know whether to laugh or get mad. She decides to get mad. “That asshole,” she says. “I told him to stay straight, at least until after his event. I’ve had it with him.”

  No matter how many jeans jackets and hats you put on Annabelle, nobody would ever mistake her for a boy. She opens her purse, shakes out a Virginia Slim, and taps it against her lighter. She seems to notice me for the first time.

  “Where have you been?” She’s impatient and pissed off, but all the same this is the friendliest she’s ever acted. It’s the first time she’s talked to me directly and not just to make an impression on whoever else is listening.

  “Working at Bearpaw Lake State Park.” I speak quickly, steeling myself for a mean reply.

  “Really?” she says. Her imagination is caught. “God, I should get a job and get out of this place.”

  Now I know who Annabelle reminds me of. She’s like the pictures I found in Aunt Ida’s trailer. This is how Mom must have been, young and pretty, when she left, when she met Dad and they got married.

  “Well, are you going to?” Annabelle asks.

  “To what?”

  “To ride for Foxy?”

  Annabelle will be impressed if I say yes. I’ll be different in her eyes, dumb maybe, but worth knowing. I take her question seriously. I consider what Evelyn would do if this was happening to her.

  “Yes,” I say.

  Dayton could be any one of the men clustered around the corral when I come in answer to the announcer’s call and hand over my credentials. The starter pins 37 to the back of Foxy’s jacket, and like a robot I mount the fence and stand above the trapped brown horse. Lots of cowboys grow their hair long, and a braid is nothing strange. No one looks at me. Maybe they’re embarrassed to see the fear in a rider’s eyes.

  From the instant I lower myself into the stall and onto the mare’s broad and sheening back, I buzz with nerves. She inclines her head and regards me with one rolled eye, and I feel her quiver through the inside of my thighs as I grip her high around the shoulders. It’s the kind of vibration that comes when you touch a low-voltage electric fence, enough to scare back cows and sheep. Tensing with not even a blanket or saddle between us, her skin seems tight-stretched. With one hand I take the rope that runs from the bit in her mouth and with the other I reach forward to pat her back.

  “Hey Babe, hey girl,” I say.

  It’s a game, I want her to know. We’re just playing. We don’t mean it for real.

  She paws her feet, snorts. A cowboy hanging on the fence touches my hat and motions for me to hold it with my free hand. I take it off and am sure that now, at last, they’ll get a clear view, realize I’m a girl, see that I don’t know how to sit, and call it off. But they still don’t see me.

  I nod to the gate. I’ll never be ready, but now is as good a time as any. There are dangers to staying in the chute too long. If the horse panics she’ll heave herself against the sides, crushing my legs. Or worse, one buck in that packed space would throw me to the ground with nowhere to roll away from a kick. It’s happened more than once on “Wide World.” The announcers talk about the metal plates in riders’ skulls.

  The sounds of the rodeo around me fade in my concentration. There’s a drone in my ears that blocks out everything else, pasts and futures and long-range worries. The horse and I are held in a vise, a wind-up toy that has been turned one twist too many, a spring coiled beyond its limit.

  “Now!” I cry, aloud or to myself I don’t know. Everything has boiled down to this instant. There’s nothing in the world except the hand of the gate judge, lowering in slow motion to the catch that contains us. I see each of his fingers clearly, separately, as they fold around the lever, I see the muscles in his forearm harden as he begins to push down.

  I never expected the music.

  Wheeling and spinning, tilting and beating, my breath the song, the horse the dance. Time is gone. All the ordinary ways of things, the gettings from here to there, the one and twos, forgot. The crowd is color, the whirl of a spun top. The noises blend into a waving band that flies around us like a ribbon on a string. Beneath me four feet dance, pounding and leaping and turning and stomping. My legs flap like wings. I sail above, first to one side, then the other, remembering more than feeling the slaps of our bodies together. Things happen faster than understanding, faster than ideas. I’m a bird coasting, shot free into the music, spiraling into a place without bones or weight.

  I’m on the ground. Unmoving. The heels of my hands sunk in the dust of the arena. My knees sore. Dizzy. Back in time. I shake sense into my head, listen as the loudspeaker brays.

  “Twenty-four seconds for the young cowboy from eastern Montana. Nice try, son. Hoka-hay.”

  A few claps from the crowd. I know I should move. I’ve seen riders today limp off when they fall, their heads hung, their mounts kicking two hind legs at the end of the ring until the clowns herd them out.

  But Babe is calm. She stands next to me, blowing air through her nostrils, looking cross-eyed and triumphant. She wins the hand. Her sides ripple. It could be laughter, it could be disgust for having been touched. Dayton’s horse.

  So I don’t leave with a wave to the stands. The first toss is warm-up, practice. I grab the rope, throw my a
rms around her neck and swing aboard. She stiffens, fuses her joints. The broad muscles of her shoulders turn steel under my gripping legs.

  And bang! We’re off again. This time instead of up and down she bolts straight ahead. The wind whips my braid, blows dust into my eyes till I have to squint them shut. She runs one fast circle around the pen, her body in a low crouch. She’s thinking.

  When you don’t know what to expect, you hang on in every way you can. I clasp the rope in one hand, her mane in the other. I dig my heels into the hollows behind the place where her forelegs join her ribs. I lean into her neck, and watch the ground rush by on either side of her ears.

  Without warning she slows, moves close to the rough plank fence where the Brahmas are milling, and shifts her weight. She stops on a dime and, still clutching her with every part of me, I roll to the left. I’m pinned between Babe and the boards, with my back against the wall. My breath is squeezed out and there’s no way I can protect my head, lolling above the pen. Then, without once lightening on the weight she presses against me, Babe walks forward as if to clean herself of me, as if I’m mud on the bottom of a boot.

  It works. The next thing I know I’m on the ground again, Foxy’s jean jacket ripped and torn across the shoulder seam, the air rushing back into my lungs, tears smeared on my cheeks. My ribs hurt, and behind me the bulls knock on the fence with their horns.

  And before me is Babe, her lips drawn over her yellow teeth, her head low and swinging back and forth, her legs planted far apart. She looks astonished, at herself or me I can’t tell.

  As I stand she begins to retreat, one foot at a time. For an instant, I hear the crowd again, but I can’t bother with them. I have Babe in my bead, our eyes in a blinding fix. Our brains lock, and she stops while I grab her mane and hook a leg over her back. Before I’m balanced, she rears. Her front legs climb the air, and I dangle along her back, suspended. When at last she drops, I’m low on her flank, our hips one on top of the other, my body fitted into her length. She rears again, and again there is air between us, yet I hang on. I smell her sweat, feel the warmth of her skin beneath my face and hands. There is nothing in the world but her and I think I can stay up forever.